Luw hesitated, the uncomfortable feeling of being weighed gripping his tongue. ‘I need a spear.’
The smith huffed. ‘Goodbye, sprite.’ He turned away, fussing with a pair of forge tongs. Panic ripped its claws through Luw’s gut.
‘Wait! Please, Master Smith, hear me out!’
‘I’ve heard all I need to, sprite,’ said the smith, coals pulsing as he shoved a shapeless lump of iron into them. ‘I’m no weaponsmith, and I’ll be thanking you for leaving me to finish my work.’
‘Please. My spear was broken. I need a new one. I can pay –’
Bellows roared as the smith heaved on them, the forge coals searing, driving back the coming dark. ‘I’ve not forged a spear in many, many years. And the last one… well… it shall remain just that.’
‘Srengbolga,’ Luw uttered. The smith’s hand froze on the bellows – just for a moment – and heaved again, the forge roaring in answer.
‘Never speak that name to me again, sprite,’ muttered the smith, moving to grip his tongs. ‘I made that thing so it could be used to slay the Fomonán King. Instead, it’s wrought nothing but misery on one half of the island and founded an empire in the other.’ He pulled the iron from the coal and positioned it upon his anvil. ‘I won’t make such a mistake again.’ His hammer rang out, sparks fountaining and bouncing, white as the sun.
‘So you are Ogmodh,’ said Luw, stepping into the edge of the forge’s terrifying heat with a wince. ‘The legendary smith of the Nuankin.’
‘Never said I wasn’t,’ the smith grunted, shrugging. ‘Legendary, though?’ He snorted a laugh. Hammer slammed iron. ‘Old is what I am. You must be Luw the Hunter. Not many of your kind left these days,’ he said, stealing a glance before the next strike. ‘The Hunters. Yn Halwr. I remember the days when a man couldn’t move without bumping into one of you sprites.’
‘The forests dwindle,’ said Luw, ‘I do what I can for them. But my kinfolk… I have not seen another Hunter in some years… too many years… and Aodhamar’s wars are ravenous.’
Ogmodh nodded, hammer clanging. ‘They are.’ Clang! ‘Always were.’ Clang! ‘Always will be. And I’ll have no part in them again.’ Clang! His last strike punched a hole through the iron he was beating. Ogmodh lifted it with the tongs, its glow touching the sharp edges of his face. ‘Shit.’
He dropped it back into the forge, grumbling as he turned toward Luw. Forge-light caught upon the smith’s mighty beard – thick, braided ropes falling to his waist, studded by countless rings of iron. Warrior rings, the Nuankin called them, forged from the weapons of crushed foes. He was old, his face lined by age and scar both, yet he did not seem as old as the tales claimed. There was something timeless to the Nuankin smith that Luw couldn’t quite put a finger to. Ogmodh felt older even than the Heartoak. He felt the smith’s eyes rake him in kind then, lingering for a moment upon the bundle that Luw clutched. He turned to the side, screening it from view, and Ogmodh laughed.
‘So, why does a forest sprite come to the deepest, darkest, most forgotten valley of the north, just to ask Ogmodh the Smith for a spear?’
Luw licked dry lips. ‘Mine was broken. I cannot guard the forest with my bow alone. My friend… my hound… he was killed, and I patrol alone. I must have a weapon. A worthy weapon.’
Ogmodh snorted. ‘Any smith in a squatter’s shitheap can make a spear that’ll kill. Don’t talk bollocks to me, sprite, I’m not fond of liars. Try again. Why do you want me to craft you a spear?’
‘Because I’m going to kill Ancu.’
Ogmodh blinked. Then, his laughter rang from the mountains. ‘You came all the way here to take the piss out of me?’ He wiped away tears, waved a hand as he turned back to the forge. ‘Get the fuck out of here, sprite, and maybe think about becoming a jester instead of a hunter! Kill Ancu.’ He shook his head, tittering as he prodded at the forge.
‘Please,’ Luw begged, stepping closer. ‘I can pay you. A handsome price.’
‘No weapon will help you against that thing,’ Ogmodh snapped, positioning the malformed lump of iron on his anvil again. ‘Did the Maid put this idea in your head?’ The hammer fell, slamming a cold rod through Luw’s gut as it rang out.
‘What?’
‘Don’t play dumb with me, sprite,’ Ogmodh snarled. ‘I might live in the middle of fucking nowhere, but I’ve got ears when I walk amongst my fellow man.’ Clang! ‘Náith the Warrior, feuding with the Horned Hunter. Both laying with that seed-growing witch, Síle.’ Clang! ‘Quite the tale people are spreading! Even the few mudfishers and sheep-pokers here are talking about it!’
Luw’s tongue scraped over the back of his teeth. He’d always kept away from the Nuankin where he could. They were coarse brutes and warmongers, for the most part. To hear that his business, his strife, was their idle gossip… it was as though he stood atop a hill, bent over, the cheeks of his arse spread to them by his own hands.
‘No,’ Luw muttered, ‘she did not.’
Ogmodh snickered. ‘Aye, sure she didn’t.’ He examined the reformed lump of iron, slowly relinquishing its shape to that of a knife. ‘You want a man’s advice, sprite? You steer clear of that one. Nothing but trouble, she is. And forget about killing Ancu. It can’t be done.’ Ogmodh set the iron aside to cool and gave Luw a long, withering look, the forge’s coals shimmering in his black eyes. ‘Go home, Hunter, and tend to your forest.’ The smith moved past him, snatching up a rag to clean his hands.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Luw stepped into his path, bent over his bundle. Ogmodh’s brow knotted, a breath of annoyance bristling his beard. ‘I can pay. More than what the spear is worth. A thousand times more.’
He whipped the cloth from about his burden and hefted between them the lump of amber he’d ripped from the Heartoak. Luw did his best not to look at the thing – it felt like offering up a handful of viscera – but Ogmodh’s eyes went wide, his mouth falling slack.
‘Is that…’ The smith pressed a finger to the amber, running it down the dark flaw that lay at its heart.
‘Earthblood,’ said Luw, pulling the amber back to him. ‘Pulled from the heart of the ancient oak in the Southern Forest. Just a drop is all that’s left, but enough for you to become more powerful than you could ever know.’
A look of hunger awoke in Ogmodh’s eyes. A forgotten longing, a dream once left behind but now within reach – or perhaps just greed, all the petty frustrations and disappointments that life serves in swift, wretched succession. The Earthblood whispered to them all, just as it whispered to those whose veins it ran through when summoned by the Earthbond. None were immune to it.
Ogmodh reached for the lump of amber, hand stopping just shy of its pitted surface. Suspicion twisted in the smith’s beard. ‘Why haven’t you taken it for yourself, if you wish to kill Ancu?’
‘My Earthbond’s affinity is with the trees and the things of the wood alone,’ said Luw. ‘They cannot help me kill Ancu. But… if you take it, use but a little to craft a spear more of death than death itself…’
‘Then I would still laugh at you and think you an arsehole, sprite,’ Ogmodh laughed.
‘This Earthblood comes from a place, from a tree that is life given root and branch,’ Luw blurted over the smith’s guffawing. ‘Infuse the blade with its strength, and it will conquer death.’
‘Death waits for all things, Hunter,’ Ogmodh countered, casting his rag aside. ‘A spear will do you no good. It is beyond weapons. Might as well go fight Ancu with one thumb up your arse and the other in your mouth. I won’t be responsible for that thing tearing out your soul. Goodbye, Master Sprite. May your forest sleep eternally.’
‘This Earthblood is tied to things that spring from the ground,’ Luw whined, moving back into his path. ‘Trees! Rocks! Metals! Think of what power you would hold over your shaping of iron!’
Ogmodh paused, ears twitching. ‘Iron, you say?’
Luw smiled. ‘Any metal. Rock. Wood. Whatever you would work with, you will know power over it. You will kno
w every secret in the weave of their existence.’
Ogmodh turned back to him, the amber glistening in his eyes. Luw could see his jaw working, tongue probing cheek, a war raging behind the mask of consideration. Finally, he laid a hand upon the amber.
‘Tell me, Hunter… if I were to do this… if… what would you need in this spear?’
Luw pulled the amber back to his chest, wrapping the cloth around it. ‘Perhaps we should sit, have a drink, and I will tell you what I need,’ he said, baring his small, sharp teeth in a victorious grin.
The Earthblood never failed to whisper to the avarice in men’s hearts.
Chapter 17
Tarbeard’s Beast
‘Step to the water, deary-do… the watcher has a gift for you…’
The singing crept over the reeds, a whisper across the diseased waters. It made the heart of the marsh feel almost tranquil, even with the hissing clouds of biting flies and the clicking things that lived among reed, moss and muck. Náith stared out to where it emanated from – across the vast stretch of filth and scum-crusted bogwater. An old Nuankin children’s song. The voice sounded distinctly female.
Náith made his way through the reeds toward the sound, keeping to the westward trail and watching his footing, trying not to let hope make him sloppy after spending the last several days trudging through stagnant water and scratching at insect bites. Everything in Iarma’s marshes seemed to either suck blood or thrive on rot. Miserable fucking place. This had to be it, though, the heart of the marsh. It was too vast and rancid not to be. A yellow-brown sea of shit, glistening beneath a fume-choked sun.
The singing grew clearer as Náith wound his way around the waters, tuneless and inane. A hundred or more paces ahead and to his left, the reeds grew thicker, thinning out again as an earthen bank jutted sharply into the bog like a jetty. Náith paused, squinted through the noisome haze. Something small and shrivelled shifted at its end. The singing stopped, a cough echoing across the distance before it picked back up, the little figure rocking back and forth.
Got you. Carefully, Náith bared steel and touched the hound’s skull upon his shoulder for luck. Checking for any sign of Aodhamar’s men, he kept low against the reeds, gliding around the water in a crouch. Halting where the reeds grew their thickest behind the outcrop, he let the song rise to its peak again before he dared rustle among the thorn-strewn fronds, easing himself among them. A few paces in, he reached through and parted the reed-wall with a finger. There she was, just ahead, where the bog water lapped and suckled at the earthen bank’s tip.
‘Step from the water, deary-do… and tell Mother what the watcher said to you…’
It had to be Béchu. She was mad enough, for sure, sat in so shitty, stinking and bleak a place as this, singing that wretched old song. The sound of it made Náith’s skin crawl, as if all the insects of the marsh marched along his flesh at once. He shuddered, and realised, too late, the singing had stopped.
‘Come out, Náith,’ an old voice creaked, ‘no sense hiding. The gnawers like the reeds as much as they do the water.’
Sure enough, something glistened upon his shoulder. Náith gave a start, stumbled from the reeds and plucked a fat gnawer from his flesh. The thing bared a horrid little three-toothed mouth at him in a hiss before he launched it into the fume-clogged distance. A shallow, numb hole bled freely on his shoulder. Náith poked at it with distaste and realised that the crone was laughing at him.
‘Nasty things, those gnawers,’ she wheezed from the stained folds of her grey cloak. A wrinkled mouth showed beneath the hood, sunken and toothless. It tightened into a line. ‘Not the worst thing to slither through this bog, though, oh no, no, no. Certainly not.’
Náith grimaced, squelching through the mud to slam his sword point-down into the earth before her. She didn’t flinch from it – seemed hardly to notice it at all, in fact – not a trace of fear showing.
‘Is it you, Béchu?’ Náith snarled.
A low chuckle answered him, a withered hand reaching up to push back her crusted hood. The face beneath was so ancient it seemed to be crumbling to dust at its edges. Náith eased a bit. It was her, Béchu the Elder. He hadn’t thought one already so old could possibly age any worse, but she looked awful.
‘Proof enough for you, you great, floppy goat cock?’ Béchu tittered toothlessly. ‘You found me, how clever of you. I never made a secret of where I was, boy, old Béchu hides from neither man nor beastie. Not even Burning Kings,’ she said, shrunken gums bared in a smile. She’d gone blind, Náith saw, or was heading there – her black Nuankin eyes filmed with grey.
‘Oh, don’t worry about these old orbs of mine, Náith,’ she tutted then, pulling her stinking cloak tighter. ‘I see you. Cu Náith. I see you, clear as a pissy day in Crath Crógadh.’
She fell into a cackling fit of hysterics, slapping the mud around her with a spidery hand. Náith cocked a brow. Still as mad as she ever had been. Curious, she knew about the name Síle had given him. The hound’s skull upon his shoulder seemed suddenly heavier.
‘The flesh withers, sweet Cu Náith,’ she tittered before he could ask, ‘but that doesn’t mean I cannot see.’
‘The Sight. That’s why you were exiled,’ said Náith, while Béchu’s head bobbed up and down on a wattled neck.
‘The Enkindled One is a generous god, but the fire in the Burning King’s heart is cancered with jealousy, my dear.’ She fell to another fit of hideous cackling. Náith’s lip twitched, irritated. She stank of piss and of unwiped arses, and fat lice, black with blood, crawled through her filthy hair.
‘Enough!’ Náith barked. She took her time calming herself, wiping a thick tear from one blind eye before she cared to look at him.
‘Let’s be about this then, wee one, I’ve things I must do,’ she sighed, glancing back out at the endless bog behind her. A small wave lapped at the earthen bank, as though the waters had shifted.
‘Practicing your singing, I hope,’ Náith spat.
‘Did you like it?’ she flashed a coy, toothless grin, stretching out on a bed of mud and shite like a lusty maid. ‘I had quite the set of pipes on me back in my youth. All the boys used to love them, you know. I was quite popular. I wonder what they’d think now I’ve got no teeth to scratch their weasels while I’m at it?’
‘Sweet words, I’m sure.’ Náith shuddered. She was disgusting. Obscene. If he had his way, there would be a law that prevented the elderly from both talking about and engaging in anything to do with fucking. Béchu found his discomfit amusing though, cackling and slapping the mud like a toddler that had escaped their mother’s attention.
‘Out with it then!’ she snapped, suddenly pointing at him with a finger that dripped mud. ‘What do you want, Cu Náith? What are you doing this far from home, eh? Something important, no doubt! Spit it out!’
‘I am told you know where Ancu is.’
‘Ancu?’ Another cackling, mud-slapping fit. Náith’s brow tightened, the chafe of another’s mockery beginning to worry at his pride. A flock of screeching birds burst from the reeds some way behind him and took to the brown sky, their disgruntlement fading into the distance.
‘Ancu,’ Béchu wheezed, drawing his attention back to her. ‘You’ve been slotting that strumpet in the north, haven’t you? That one as calls herself Síle.’
‘You watch your tongue on her, crone.’ Náith’s hand rest upon the pommel of his sword. An idle threat, but the warning was lost on Béchu. She reached out, tracing grimy fingers down the flat of the blade, her face gripped by awe.
‘Ah… the blade that tasted Mag Cáitha’s blood. The blade that should have killed Sreng the Everburning… you should call it Cáithnas, boy. A sword needs a name, you know. The greatest of its victims should do. A pity you can’t name it Srengnas.’
‘It’ll be named after you if you don’t give me what I want,’ Náith snarled as she tittered maliciously. Her laughter cut off, grey eyes swivelling toward him, shrunken gums bared in a corpse’s snee
r.
‘Don’t threaten me, boy. I’ve suffered worse in my time than the words and the blades of puffed up, yapping pups.’ Her sightless stare lingered on his own for what felt like the longest, most frozen moment he’d ever endured. Something in them raked Náith’s insides, rattled him as if shook by a giant’s hand and left him feeling bare-arse naked before her.
He looked away, a sweat breaking out across his forehead, assaulted by Béchu’s cackling. ‘See? You see? Don’t fuck with me, Cu Náith, I fuck back twice as hard!’ She slapped the mud again, laughing obscenely. Behind her, bog water stirred, a flurry of waves licking at the earth.
‘Hurry up, boy! I’ve business you’re keeping me from!’ Béchu screeched. ‘What do you want with Ancu?’
‘My business with Ancu is my own. Tell me where I can find the death-god and I will leave you be.’
Béchu’s gummy grin grew wider. ‘Not to worry. I already know. There’s quicker ways to die than to seek out the death-god, Cu Náith! That’s all you’ll find with that one! Death, upon death, upon death! Tell me, though,’ she asked as her chuckles ebbed. ‘Do you think you’re the first to come here seeking the death-god? You think you’re the first one that marrow-swelling earth-nymph has sent here on this fool’s quest?’
Náith blinked, suddenly numb. Béchu’s laughter stabbed his ears like rusting knives.
‘What was the reward, Cu Náith? Her warmth in your bed? Her sweet, tender love for all eternity?’ Her grin grew wider at the blank look he offered. ‘You’ll have none of it. Not one bit, you greasy fucking fool!’
Náith restrained himself, pulled his hand back from his sword and uncurled his fists. The bog was stirring behind Béchu, its shit-coloured waves reaching for the hem of the crone’s tattered garb. ‘I’ll take that chance, you mad old turd,’ he snapped, trying to ignore the scratching little burr her words had planted in him.
‘Madness is trying to kill death itself, Cu Náith. Remember that, on your way to Gólga.’ She turned away, staring out across the churning waters. ‘Now leave me be, the marsh grows restless.’ She cleared her throat and sang again. ‘Step to the water, deary-do… the watcher has a gift for you…’
Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 Page 12